Jimmy "Afraid of a rabbit" Carter signed an executive order banning nuclear fuel reprocessing which is necessary for fast breeder reactor operation. Basically most of Uranium is U-238 which absorbs a fast neutron to U-239 then decays to Plutonium 239. Reprocessing the fuel separates out the Plutonium which can then be used as slow-neutron fuel. But because that turns fuel-reprocessing into a turrist target, Carter hoped to lead by example. He failed.

Fusion is still struggling to produce as much net energy as lighting a stick of wood. Thorium reactors sound promising, but a promise isn't reality. Fast breeder reactors are a proven technology that can produce all the energy we'll need for the forseeable future.

AngryDragon:This is a political problem, not a technical one. Nuclear fuel is capable of being 99% efficient. You can't produce weapons as a byproduct though.

Are you talking about thorium reactors? I read an interesting piece about them not too long ago, can't be used for weapons but supposedly a lot safer. Couldn't like ONE reactor produce enough to maintain our current nuclear arsenal anyway?

The author lost me when he claimed that solar panels are worse than nuclear. He seems to be arguing that the space requirements would turn vast areas of the planet into solar deserts, where nothing could exist but solar panels, which is nonsense. He also conveniently forgets we have these huge sprawling cities that we can put solar panels on top of.

nekom:AngryDragon:This is a political problem, not a technical one. Nuclear fuel is capable of being 99% efficient. You can't produce weapons as a byproduct though.

Are you talking about thorium reactors? I read an interesting piece about them not too long ago, can't be used for weapons but supposedly a lot safer. Couldn't like ONE reactor produce enough to maintain our current nuclear arsenal anyway?

syrnyxx covered it better than I did.

But yes. Thorium, fast-breeders, and "pebble-bed" technologies can improve safety, efficiency, or all but eliminate waste. These aren't technical problems, almost all of this technology is available right now to some degree. Because of FUD it is prohibitive to research, design, and implement an effective hybrid solution that takes the best of all worlds and delivers.

Essentially we don't have a nuclear waste problem because we have to, we have one because we choose to. We choose to because a segment of the population is afraid of nuclear technology and is actively seeking to put the genie back in the bottle.

Are you talking about thorium reactors? I read an interesting piece about them not too long ago, can't be used for weapons but supposedly a lot safer. Couldn't like ONE reactor produce enough to maintain our current nuclear arsenal anyway?

That depends on what you mean by "maintain". They weapons already have what they need with respect to heavy metals. And if you are going to replace them, it's easier to just use existing weapons grade materials than sift them out of spent fuel.

You can see that experts judged nuclear power as safer than commercial air travel ... with much the same risk as food colouring.

Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" basis for judging the impact of a technology. As long as the odds are low that I'll be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, then who cares about long-term exposure and other lovely things that generations will suffer through.

After all, "In the long run, all of us are dead."

/you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

chopit:The author lost me when he claimed that solar panels are worse than nuclear.

It's really a shame his points about Fast Neutron Reactors are buried under such pro-nuclear derp.

I particularly liked how he said Fast Neutron Reactors are great because they get rid of nuclear waste, then turns around and says there are already lots of excellent ways to get rid of nuclear waste and nuclear waste isn't even a problem. So, i guess they aren't that great? Or what?

TheShavingofOccam123:Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" basis for judging the impact of a technology. As long as the odds are low that I'll be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, then who cares about long-term exposure and other lovely things that generations will suffer through.

Ah, yes: fear-driven decision making. Never mind that even the worst nuclear power plant disasters in history have not produced -and, in fact, are incapable of producing- a "nuclear holocaust" of the sort you describe. Never mind that coal power plants produce considerably more radiation in the surrounding area than nuclear power plants do. You're just scared of the rads.

TheShavingofOccam123:You can see that experts judged nuclear power as safer than commercial air travel ... with much the same risk as food colouring.

Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" basis for judging the impact of a technology. As long as the odds are low that I'll be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, then who cares about long-term exposure and other lovely things that generations will suffer through.

After all, "In the long run, all of us are dead."

/you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

So we shouldn't use nuclear power for generating electricity because depleted uranium when fired from the main gun of a tank is harmful? Should we also should stop building things out of steel since steel core bullets sometimes kill children? I love the logic of anti-nuke people.

"we shouldn't build nuclear reactors because we aren't 100% sure of how to dispose of the byproducts."

That seems like good logic on the face of it except when you figure in that the only other major generation options available deal with their harmful (and yes radioactive) waste in the following method:

TheShavingofOccam123:You can see that experts judged nuclear power as safer than commercial air travel ... with much the same risk as food colouring.

Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" basis for judging the impact of a technology. As long as the odds are low that I'll be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, then who cares about long-term exposure and other lovely things that generations will suffer through.

After all, "In the long run, all of us are dead."

/you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

Yes, and there is more a danger from the chemical properties of the heavy metal than there is the radiation. The DoD does U238 bioassays on anyone who personally thinks it is necessary.

No matter, the comparison is not really valid as spent fuel isn't taken and smashed into anything that would disperse it into the environment. Waste handling from power plants and fabrication facilities is so safe it would blow your mind...overkill comes to mind. And the exposure suffered by radiation workers is ridiculously low (higher than the normal person but not at all harmful).

UberDave:TheShavingofOccam123: You can see that experts judged nuclear power as safer than commercial air travel ... with much the same risk as food colouring.

Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" basis for judging the impact of a technology. As long as the odds are low that I'll be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, then who cares about long-term exposure and other lovely things that generations will suffer through.

After all, "In the long run, all of us are dead."

/you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

Yes, and there is more a danger from the chemical properties of the heavy metal than there is the radiation. The DoD does U238 bioassays on anyone who personally thinks it is necessary.

No matter, the comparison is not really valid as spent fuel isn't taken and smashed into anything that would disperse it into the environment. Waste handling from power plants and fabrication facilities is so safe it would blow your mind...overkill comes to mind. And the exposure suffered by radiation workers is ridiculously low (higher than the normal person but not at all harmful).

Check out a US military manual on how to hand depleted uranium munitions. Those rounds tend to ignite and burn off their nuclear materials. It's what they are designed to do.

syrynxx:Jimmy "Afraid of a rabbit" Carter signed an executive order banning nuclear fuel reprocessing which is necessary for fast breeder reactor operation. Basically most of Uranium is U-238 which absorbs a fast neutron to U-239 then decays to Plutonium 239. Reprocessing the fuel separates out the Plutonium which can then be used as slow-neutron fuel. But because that turns fuel-reprocessing into a turrist target, Carter hoped to lead by example. He failed.

Fusion is still struggling to produce as much net energy as lighting a stick of wood. Thorium reactors sound promising, but a promise isn't reality. Fast breeder reactors are a proven technology that can produce all the energy we'll need for the forseeable future.

It has been over 35 years since then. Any pro-nuclear president since then could have signed a new executive order legalizing nuclear reprocessing, and in fact Reagen rescinded the order in 1981.

nekom:I have ALWAYS wondered why nuclear waste even existed. Got to be a lot of energy to be harnessed in that stuff, guess it's a bit more complicated than that.

#1 reason - cost. It was cheaper to dig up new uranium than to reprocess the used stuff, and there was lots of room in the storage yard out back. Thankfully there are some exceptions, such as a recent project in China demonstrating re-use of "spent" light-water reactor fuel in a CANDU heavy-water-moderated reactor. They are actually mixing in some depleted uranium so that the enrichment level of the "spent" fuel is closer to that of natural uranium.

Incidentally the CANDU design can also burn thorium fuel without using a "molten salt" cycle. You need to start with some fissile uranium fuel rods, but then the thorium absorbs neutrons and breeds in place to U-233 (just as a fraction of the U-238 in its normal fuel is converted to plutonium).

TheShavingofOccam123:Check out a US military manual on how to hand depleted uranium munitions. Those rounds tend to ignite and burn off their nuclear materials. It's what they are designed to do.

You're talking to an ex-munitions/nuclear weapon maintenance technician who writes and designs radiation exposure management software. And I don't know what the operation of a DU round has to do with anything. If you are near it, you probably have a u238 intake. And I still don't get the relevancy to spent fuel and other rad waste from commercial plants. Are you saying there is the potential for U238 from spent fuel to powderize and ignite?

liam76:Millennium: liam76: They all aren't afraid for the same reason.

Actually, they pretty much are all afraid for the same reason: rads are scary.

Fallout joke, or don't think coal/oil have a vested interest in keeping nuclear power out of the market?

Oh, I do think that coal/oil have some degree of interest in keeping nuclear power out of the market. But that covers only a very small number of people -in the low three digits, if even that- and they stay in the background. Their marketing is based, not on profit concerns, but on scary rads. That's how they convince people to fight for them, and it works well enough, but it pushes the people actually fighting for coal/oil profits into an insignificant minority. Then again, that suits them just fine.

Everyone knows you can just shovel waste from one existing reactor design into a reactor design that looks great on paper but has never actually been built as if it was coal clinkers.

It will automagically be the right geometry and composition for the new fuel rods, and you won't have to dissolve it in fluoric acid, refine it, re-create new pellets and deal with the millions of gallons of hot processing waste.

High level fuel waste is expensive to store,(for US taxpayers but not utilities) but it's the least of our problems. France has made it a matter of national pride that they've been reprocessing for 40 years.

How far have they gotten in 40 years? They sell the useful stuff to Japan and pay Russia to store millions of Kg of waste in a Siberian ghost town. They're also looking to build their own "Yucca Mountain" style high-level dump.

TheShavingofOccam123:/you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

That is arguably, I would think, less "ZOMG RADIATION" and more the fact that uranium, still radioactive or not, IS A HEAVY METAL AND INCREDIBLY TOXIC. And I believe is more prone to powederizing?

So, that's... not.. really an argument against nuclear power. That's an argument again "hey! Let's take this INSANELY toxic heavy metal and make bullets out of it. Yeah, sure, some of the bullet turns to a fine dust when it's fired or impacts, but WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"

TheShavingofOccam123:Check out a US military manual on how to hand depleted uranium munitions. Those rounds tend to ignite and burn off their nuclear materials. It's what they are designed to do.

Depleted uranium's radioactivity is so low that it can actually be used as radiation shielding, and it performs this task even better than lead.

This is not to say that it doesn't have its share of problems. It should, indeed, probably not be used in ammunition. One reason for this is that, as a heavy metal, it is poisonous in ways that have nothing to do with radiation: handling it is a lot like handling lead, and carries many of the same dangers. The other problem is that it's pyrophoric -it can catch fire in air- and this is what your DU-handling guides are referring to. The smoke and fumes from such fires are not especially radioactive: they are not "nuclear materials." But you still wouldn't want to inhale them, because it would be like inhaling smoke made of lead.

In other words, there are already enough sensible and rational reasons to avoid depleted uranium. We don't need to inflate the dangers because of scary rads.

TheShavingofOccam123: /you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

That is arguably, I would think, less "ZOMG RADIATION" and more the fact that uranium, still radioactive or not, IS A HEAVY METAL AND INCREDIBLY TOXIC. And I believe is more prone to powederizing?

So, that's... not.. really an argument against nuclear power. That's an argument again "hey! Let's take this INSANELY toxic heavy metal and make bullets out of it. Yeah, sure, some of the bullet turns to a fine dust when it's fired or impacts, but WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"

B) it's "self-sharpening," a properly cast round will spall off it's outer layers and remain sharp like a pencil in a sharpener when it hits armor. Lead just pancakes.

C) it is "pyrophoric" meaning that the monatomically fine cloud of uranium powder created by the self-sharpening will flash into flame in the presence of oxygen and the heat of passing through armor. Even if the bullet misses the guy driving the tank, the fireball will get him anyway.

There's nothing else like it, and it's cheap... There's very little commercial use for it other than AP rounds and ballast on airplanes and ships.

The downsides:

DU is a heavy metal with the same flipper-baby and retardation potential as lead. Unlike lead, DU creates a big cloud of fine powder that blows around and gets into food, water, and the lungs of everyone including the people who fired the round. It doesn't go away with time, it just disperses further and further.

TheShavingofOccam123: /you can google and see what the use of depleted uranium in munitions is doing to Iraq and other battlefields and to the combatants (including Americans) and innocents.

That is arguably, I would think, less "ZOMG RADIATION" and more the fact that uranium, still radioactive or not, IS A HEAVY METAL AND INCREDIBLY TOXIC. And I believe is more prone to powederizing?

So, that's... not.. really an argument against nuclear power. That's an argument again "hey! Let's take this INSANELY toxic heavy metal and make bullets out of it. Yeah, sure, some of the bullet turns to a fine dust when it's fired or impacts, but WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"

B) it's "self-sharpening," a properly cast round will spall off it's outer layers and remain sharp like a pencil in a sharpener when it hits armor. Lead just pancakes.

C) it is "pyrophoric" meaning that the monatomically fine cloud of uranium powder created by the self-sharpening will flash into flame in the presence of oxygen and the heat of passing through armor. Even if the bullet misses the guy driving the tank, the fireball will get him anyway.

There's nothing else like it, and it's cheap... There's very little commercial use for it other than AP rounds and ballast on airplanes and ships.

The downsides:

DU is a heavy metal with the same flipper-baby and retardation potential as lead. Unlike lead, DU creates a big cloud of fine powder that blows around and gets into food, water, and the lungs of everyone including the people who fired the round. It doesn't go away with time, it just disperses further and further.

Ah, I should not I have a really bad habit of, when I am not 100% sure of something (instead, say.. only 98% sure) I tend to couch in "I think" and 'I'm pretty sure'. Thank you for confirming what I was trying to get across, though-The issues coming from the use of DU do not arise, in any fashion, from radioactivity.

UberDave:TheShavingofOccam123: Check out a US military manual on how to hand depleted uranium munitions. Those rounds tend to ignite and burn off their nuclear materials. It's what they are designed to do.

You're talking to an ex-munitions/nuclear weapon maintenance technician who writes and designs radiation exposure management software. And I don't know what the operation of a DU round has to do with anything. If you are near it, you probably have a u238 intake. And I still don't get the relevancy to spent fuel and other rad waste from commercial plants. Are you saying there is the potential for U238 from spent fuel to powderize and ignite?

Then you are aware your industry takes enormous amounts of ore, strips out small amounts of useful materials. The damage of uranium mining to the environment is external to you. Like the uranium tailings that flooded into one of the most beautiful areas of the Grand Canyon. Nope, that damage is external to you.

Then your industry refines and enriches the materials. Injuries to workers and damage to the watershed and other parts of the environment are external to you.

Then you put the stuff into reactors. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima and all other countless releases of radiation--large and small-- and the damages (long term and short term) are external to your industry.

Then you store the spent materials or you find other uses for the spent materials. The exposure of and damage to US troops, innocents and the battlefield environments and the home environments (read soldiers who return home) to spent nuclear fuel that is still radioactive is external.

So I guess nuclear power is real safe. As long as I get to externalize all of the costs it inflicts on people and the planet.

TheShavingofOccam123:Then you store the spent materials or you find other uses for the spent materials. The exposure of and damage to US troops, innocents and the battlefield environments and the home environments (read soldiers who return home) to spent nuclear fuel that is still radioactive is external.

No. Again. This is not how DU works. DU has dangerous health effects. They do not arise from radiation. They arise from the fact that it is a heavy metal, and heavy metals are very, very toxic. It is not magical radiation. It is because it literally turns into poison dust.

Please actually try to understand what the fark you are talking about.

Millennium:Their marketing is based, not on profit concerns, but on scary rads. That's how they convince people to fight for them

There is no shadowy group convincing people to fight for them. Radiation does genetic damage, and people tend to like their genetics. It's really as simple as that. Not an economic or political issue. Radiation is truly pretty terrifying to millions of years of evolution, and our genetic lines. There is nothing we should protect more.

Genetics aren't some abstract unproven concept, and the effect radiation has on them is well known. But we've got all these 'experts' being willfully ignorant of all that in the name of profits and politics. Should be ashamed of yourselves.

It's a weak alpha emitter. Sites that handle a lot of it, DOE, fabrication, will either perform bioassays for it or lapel monitor. And the dose is always really low....as in, "that's nothing, let's put zero down."

J. Frank Parnell:There is no shadowy group convincing people to fight for them. Radiation does genetic damage, and people tend to like their genetics. It's really as simple as that.

No, the minimum bar for "as simple as that" also has to include a discussion of natural radioactivity such as potassium and carbon isotopes in the body itself, solar and cosmic radiation, radon gas, uranium (and its decay products) in coal-plant exhaust, etc.

Felgraf:TheShavingofOccam123: Then you store the spent materials or you find other uses for the spent materials. The exposure of and damage to US troops, innocents and the battlefield environments and the home environments (read soldiers who return home) to spent nuclear fuel that is still radioactive is external.

No. Again. This is not how DU works. DU has dangerous health effects. They do not arise from radiation. They arise from the fact that it is a heavy metal, and heavy metals are very, very toxic. It is not magical radiation. It is because it literally turns into poison dust.

Please actually try to understand what the fark you are talking about.

Give it up, man. You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think. You and a few others have done the first part, and the second clearly ain't gonna happen.

Felgraf:TheShavingofOccam123: Then you store the spent materials or you find other uses for the spent materials. The exposure of and damage to US troops, innocents and the battlefield environments and the home environments (read soldiers who return home) to spent nuclear fuel that is still radioactive is external.

No. Again. This is not how DU works. DU has dangerous health effects. They do not arise from radiation. They arise from the fact that it is a heavy metal, and heavy metals are very, very toxic. It is not magical radiation. It is because it literally turns into poison dust.

Please actually try to understand what the fark you are talking about.

I do understand that one of the uses the nuclear energy industry has found for dumping its wastes out of its hands in order to make nuclear energy safer is to provide the US military with DU.

DU is both toxic and radioactive. When used in munitions, it is is designed to burn. The resulting remnants of the munitions are easily suspended in air, water and soil. That material--both chemically toxic and radioactive--can be ingested by humans and other life and can also make its way into groundwater and soil used for growing crops.

TheShavingofOccam123:DU is both toxic and radioactive. When used in munitions, it is is designed to burn. The resulting remnants of the munitions are easily suspended in air, water and soil. That material--both chemically toxic and radioactive--can be ingested by humans and other life and can also make its way into groundwater and soil used for growing crops